


Set-up

by blueorangecrush



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: April 30, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Over-involved Mothers, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueorangecrush/pseuds/blueorangecrush
Summary: Jasra sets her son up to begin the work of avenging his father, until she learns of a young woman who also deserves revenge.
Relationships: Brand/Jasra (Chronicles of Amber), Luke | Rinaldo/Gail, Luke | Rinaldo/Julia, Merlin/Julia (Chronicles of Amber)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Set-up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueFloyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueFloyd/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this peek into Jasra's thoughts as she observes her son and his best frenemy over the years. :)

It’s hard for a mother to let go of her only son.

And even more so when the son looks so much like his father.

And even _more_ so when his father is dead.

But it was going to be the best way to avenge his father, maybe even the _only_ way.

Rinaldo had definitely inherited a number of his father’s talents – most importantly, for these purposes, his charm, his intuition, and his ability to keep secrets to himself.

Brand had told Jasra about that strange world that so many of the royalty of Amber found themselves mixed up with. Dara had told Jasra about her son Merlin, about his desire to learn more about his father, to spend time in the places that Corwin had spent time.

It all led back to Earth. And for the time being, to the place called California, where Merle Corey would be enrolling in the one university of that world that had actually once conferred a degree for the study of magical arts.

Rinaldo – with a bunch of paperwork that gave him a new name, Luke Reynard – was going to follow his cousin there, was going to study _him_ as well as studying the ordinary academic subjects offered at Berkeley.

And then – just for practice, of course – he was going to kill Merlin. As a training exercise, in preparation for truly avenging his father’s death.

Jasra had it all planned out.

\--

Jasra had planned other things out for Rinaldo, of course. There was a small, wealthy kingdom – one of the so-called “Golden Circle” countries that was enriched by its proximity to Amber’s empire. Their monetary wealth was perhaps matched only by their magical poverty, and Jasra was well-aware by now of exactly how she could exploit such a situation, leaving a nation with no place to turn but to her for the healing of the strategic damage she could so easily cause.

There was a neighboring kingdom engaged in a long-standing dispute over some prime real estate, with debts to be paid and a beautiful young princess.

Perhaps an arrangement could be made, and a young couple could double their riches, end the dispute, and bring peace and safety to two kingdoms united as one.

It would be a simple enough matter.

She wished Brand could be there to see her set this scheme in motion for their son. Not to help her – he understood that she had her pride, that unsolicited help was the hardest thing to accept, _even from him_ – but rather to cheer her on, to laugh delightedly as she bent lands and people and circumstances to her will.

\--

Coral, the lovely Begman princess, would have to wait.

Meanwhile, Rinaldo was completely infatuated with a completely unsuitable woman named Carol. The very similarity of the name was an affront to Jasra’s sensibilities – for the two were nothing alike. 

Carol didn’t even go to the university – she was a waitress at some awful little place Rinaldo and his friends hung out. And Merlin had shown interest in her, so Rinaldo decided he had to have her, since he seemed to have decided to learn about his cousin by imitation.

There were worse methods, Jasra supposed. Even if – well – everything about Carol just _bothered_ Jasra.

Rinaldo could do so much better. Then again, eventually he would have to. He was a child of Amber, with the lifespan and the slow-aging and the ability to hop between worlds that came with it. But someday he’d be tired enough of playing around in all the worlds where time ran fast and he’d come back.

He’d come back, to a waiting throne and a waiting bride.

He’d come close enough to Amber to have a chance to destroy its terrible, beautiful, utterly corrupt power once and for all.

\--

Jasra was relieved when Carol stopped showing up in the places she was able to look in on when she checked on Rinaldo.

She’d been a distraction. Too much of a distraction. Carol apparently knew some guys who were willing to get their hands dirty for the right price, and as April prepared to turn into May, she had put Rinaldo in touch with them.

The plan had failed, of course. A couple of Earthling street thugs weren’t going to do serious, lasting damage to a healthy young man who was descended of two different bloodlines of Amber, plus who-knows-how-many usefully noble families on the Chaosian side.

It was just practice, just a warm-up, had been Rinaldo's reasoning.

And maybe it was for the best, that this plan had failed. The reminder of the strength of Amber persuaded Rinaldo to look to his own physical conditioning, which he had been a touch neglectful of in favor of the mental aspects of his arts.

Perhaps that had seemed pointless to him when he would only have the mediocre men of Earth to compare himself to. But having – much as Jasra hated to think in these terms – an equal, a true rival, was serving to motivate Rinaldo.

He put on muscle. He gained strength and speed. Sprinting, hurdles, shotput, javelin. He was good. Merlin made him better. 

The girl he’d found to replace Carol wasn’t so bad. Julia was…someone Jasra could see herself liking. She was not just intelligent but also curious, not merely attractive but also charismatic. Julia might not have been able to keep up with Rinaldo physically, but she came closer to keeping up with him mentally than anyone of Earth ought to be able to.

It was a pity Rinaldo was promised elsewhere, Jasra often thought, because Julia would make a phenomenal daughter-in-law. She might even make a half-decent magician.

When Julia and Rinaldo went their separate ways, she soon took up with Merlin, of all fucking men.

Jasra wondered if that might be enough, if this time when Rinaldo considered how to deal with Merlin it would be not just for the family’s sake but for his own.

He’d actually brought some guy from another Shadow world to try to do the deed, this time around. Jasra was surprised when it failed.

\--

What surprised her more – though perhaps it shouldn’t have – was just how much time Rinaldo willingly spent with Merlin and Julia over the next year. There was a girl named Gail who joined them, completing the foursome. Something seemed _off_ about her, in a way Jasra didn’t understand, but at least she seemed well enough able to keep up with the rest of them.

That year on April 30, Rinaldo picked the lock of Merlin’s apartment, set the gas stove to a slow leak. Jasra wasn’t sure whether to even count that as a serious attempt to kill Merlin, but at least that time Rinaldo had acted personally rather than hiring a proxy. Perhaps it was progress.

\--

By the next April on Earth, the four of them were set to graduate, and a local tech startup had extended post-graduation job offers to both Merlin and Rinaldo. 

Jasra paid her son a visit on April 29, asking about his plans for the next day.

Rinaldo just looked away.

“If you don’t make plans, son, I’ll make them for you.”

The simple explosive he put together that night to leave in Merlin’s mailbox was, again, disappointingly underpowered, but it was better than nothing. Maybe she’d get lucky and it would actually work.

\--

The next year, Rinaldo simply refused to try again.

Gail had left him, Julia had left Merlin, and so Merlin was all he had left of the old crowd.

“If you wanted me to be his killer, you shouldn’t have let me become his best friend.”

Typical rebellious late-blooming adolescent.

\--

She wouldn’t go so far as to say she didn’t _have_ a son anymore, but sometimes it felt that way.

Fortunately, there were other things to do, other people to see, in San Francisco.

Victor Melman thought he was more powerful than he was. He was an idiot – one to be disposed of in time, perhaps by a failed initiation into greater power – but for the time being he was a useful one.

He mentioned to Jasra that there was a girl who had come to him. Seeking knowledge. Seeking protection. Seeking power.

The girl’s name was Julia, and she had had an encounter she couldn’t explain – a dream that was too real, that the man she was seeing had accompanied her throughout, and then refused to discuss.

What an absolute fucking idiot Merlin, son of Corwin, child of Pattern and Logrus, must have been. This young woman had potential, had power, so rarely seen outside of the Golden or Black Circles, and he’d wasted it on a romantic fairytale evening that he then wouldn’t even admit existed.

If Jasra hadn’t been trying to kill Merlin, or to get her son to kill him, for the last six years, she would certainly want to do it now.

But no. She shouldn’t be the one to rid all the worlds of this insufferable jackass.

Julia should be given those honors.

She should be trained in the power she sought, to whatever extent she could make use of it.

And then _she_ should destroy the man who tried to destroy her belief in herself. Not cleanly, but slowly and painfully until the final revelation that the woman he spurned as powerless was the one who overpowered him until he was no more.

This wasn’t _just_ about avenging Jasra's own beloved, anymore.


End file.
